


sonata

by Moransroar



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - World War II, Angst with a Happy Ending, Death, Established Relationship, Everybody Lives, F/M, Hurt Tony Stark, Mutilation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Pepper Potts, Time Skips, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Trench Warfare, nothing is too graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:07:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24831346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moransroar/pseuds/Moransroar
Summary: It's 1944, and Tony and Pepper have been married for just a few years when they get a letter in their mail box. Tony has to go to war, to help fellow American citizens in their effort to put a stop to the war that's raging on all across Europe.Pepper stays home, and anxiously awaits Tony's letters.All she can really do is hope that one day he'll return. And that when he does, it will be in one piece.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 3
Kudos: 40





	sonata

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ErjaStark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErjaStark/gifts).



> This is basically a summary of this AU Erja and I have been cooking up. I hope my words do it justice, even though it's much, much shorter than it definitely could be, but hey! I had to write it :')

The announcement comes unexpectedly.

Tony and Pepper are sitting at their dining table, exhausted after a long day’s work. Pepper is knitting a pair of gloves with some old wool from a discarded sweater for the winter, while Tony goes through some mail.

He finds a letter wherein the government expresses their concerns about overseas troubles in Europe, and urges people to join the military to help the cause against the Germans.

Tony shows it to Pepper, who tells him that he _better not even think about it_. They throw the letter out, and try not to think about it again until the next one arrives.

This time, it’s no longer just an encouragement. It’s an order. They’re rounding up everyone who can help their effort, and are sending them away. Pepper protests, but the contents of the letter are clear. Tony is to report to one of the nearby scouting stations, or face criminal charges.

So needless to say, he reports. And after he reports, he gets his department date, and that’s that.

He brings the news home, and they fight for the first time in a very long time. But there is nothing either of them can do. All they can really do, is make sure that the last few days they have together before Tony has to leave for god knows how long, are spent well.

So they do what they can to make every minute count. They dance, and they drink, and they go out with friends. They stay up late and sleep wrapped around each other, both knowing that soon, they’ll be miles and miles apart.

It feels like a celebration. Like a party. People in the streets are waving from their windows, cheering, watching the men in their uniforms march down the streets toward the harbor, to the boats that will take them halfway across the world to where they will be laying down their lives for a good cause.

Except most don’t know they won’t be coming back.

Everyone is optimistic, and it shows in the atmosphere.

Tony holds Pepper’s hand a little tighter as they make their way down the street, trying desperately to suppress his nerves. He doesn’t know what’s waiting for him across the Atlantic, and he’s not sure he wants to find out.

He has everything here. He has the love of his life, and he has a house, and he has a job. It isn’t the most stable thing, and they are struggling on a daily basis, but they are happy.

He was happy.

The thing he dreads most, is being away from Pepper for so long. Since they got married only a few years back, they haven’t really been apart for longer than a few days, and it’s going to take some getting used to. He doesn’t know just how much yet, but he has a feeling it’s going to be pretty bad. Not as bad as it turns out to be, though.

They arrive at their destination, where men and women and children are milling about, all saying their goodbyes before the men board the large boat docked off to one side. Pepper and Tony turn to each other, not quite knowing what to say.

Pepper holds onto the lapels of Tony’s jacket as she kisses him, long and firm, keeping him close with the grip on his clothes. She has tears in her eyes when they pull apart again, and makes Tony promise that he’ll come back in one piece.

Tony cracks a joke, tries to reassure her, tells her that he’ll be back before she knows it. He’s just hiding how scared he is, how terrified he is of what he might find on the other end of the world. He teases that he’s never flown in a plane before, and that it should be interesting. He says that’s probably what they should be most scared of, Tony anywhere near a plane, but neither of them believe his words.

They both know something much scarier is waiting for Tony. Call it a gut feeling.

Pepper waves at the boat until she can no longer see Tony standing among the men on the deck, and then she waves some more. She goes home to an empty apartment, with Tony’s promise in the back of her mind that he’ll write her, every day.

And Tony does write her every day. He gets a hold of some paper and a pencil, and he keeps the items close, wherever he goes, whatever situation he gets stuck in.

The journey across the North Atlantic is horrid, but once they get to France everything seems reasonably normal. It’s not the front line though, and people left and right warn Tony and his troopmates that it’s not what they think it is like out there, and that they should brace themselves.

They get their gear, their weapons, and are steered away from the med tents where Tony is sure he can hear chilling wails of pain that stick with him for longer than he dares to admit.

The front line is horrible.

That’s all Tony can really say.

It’s horrifying. He can’t get used to the constant wall of noise surrounding him, bombs flying and guns blazing, firearms blaring left and right. This is not what he thought he’d find, but all he can do is follow his orders, and make sure his feet don’t get stuck in the mud.

The trenches smell of something awful, and it’s only just rained, so Tony loses his boots more than once the first few days. His feet are wet and his uniform is heavy and he can’t see anything under the rim of his helmet half the time, but what can he do?

He can write to Pepper. And think of her in whatever silence during temporary ceasefires he gets. Or even through the blaring in his ears, he thinks of her, or tries to at least.

He chooses to spend the time he is assigned to rest, finding a mostly dry spot to sit down and write to his wife back home while his pocket watch with her picture in it sits on the rickety desk in front of him, or on whatever surface he can find to write on. He prefers writing to drinking his worries away with his trenchmates. He did promise that he would write her every day.

Tony pretends everything is fine. He chooses not to write about the state he’s in, or the trenches, or the gunfire, or the perpetual stench of rot he’s surrounded with, or the friends he has to watch die. He doesn’t write that his feet hurt, or that he’s scared to go to sleep at night, or how he thinks he’s losing his mind. He writes that he misses her, and that he thinks of her often, and that he dreams about her every night.

And he does – when he can sleep.

Whenever he can sleep, he dreams of slow dancing in the living room to their song, pulling Pepper close by the waist and rocking them back and forth to the rhythm of the Moonlight Sonata, smiling against each other’s necks and sharing soft kisses, hiding their too-eager grins over each other’s shoulders. They’d been so happy to have everything they could have ever wanted. God, what he wouldn’t give to be in his wife’s arms again.

Sometimes, he thinks he can smell a whiff of her perfume somewhere, among the mud and gunpowder and the stink of the corpses buried halfway in the dirt. That’s when he misses her the most, perhaps. That, and when he’s alone late at night, and he can’t sleep, and he knows that if he were home, Pepper would pull him closer and pet his hair and tell him that everything was going to be alright.

Now, he’s not so sure. He’s not so sure he’ll be alright, but he writes to Pepper that he’s doing fine, and that he’s still alive.

While sometimes, he barely is.

Pepper waits on letters every day.

She works when she can, and rejoices when another bundle falls through the mail slot onto their welcome mat.

Every letter that she gets, translates into another day that Tony is still alive.

She keeps every single one of them, and reads them late at night when the suddenly unusually big bed becomes unbearable for her by herself, or when she’s sitting at the dinner table by herself, in the morning before work or in the evening before bed.

She keeps the radio on, unable to bear the sudden silence of the house. Without Tony’s rustling or chatting or mucking about, it’s quiet, and she doesn’t like it. Hopefully soon Tony will be able to return, so that things can go back to the way they were before. She can’t wait to be able to hold him in her arms again. Every time she reads that Tony thinks of those things too, she misses him that little bit more.

She can’t write her own letters and send them, Tony already told her in one of his letters that the men in his camp can’t receive anything, only send things out when provisions come.

So she gets letters in bundles, and counts the days, and hopes Tony is alright, and that he knows that she misses him just as dearly.

God, she hopes he knows.

When the letters stop, months into Tony’s time abroad, it’s nothing unusual at first.

Pepper thinks maybe it will take a few days before a new bundle arrives, perhaps a little longer than she’s used to. A few days without news she can handle. Right?

It doesn’t get worrying until a whole week passes, and no letter arrives. Not even a single one. She goes down to the post office to ask, because what if their mailman was ill, and there was no one to replace him, and now all of her mail is still at the main office?

But no letter is there, and none had come, and her mailman isn’t ill at all.

She waits a few more days, telling herself something new that might have happened every day. Those theories get gradually worse though, and gradually scarier, starting with Tony possibly moving further inland and having no time to write, or no way to send letters, to Tony possibly….well, dying.

Pepper thinks of the most gruesome ways in which Tony could possibly die. He could get shot, he could get gravely ill, he could get an infection. It’s a particularly cold winter, too, even in New York – perhaps he’s frozen to death.

Yet another month goes by, and Pepper thinks she’s losing her mind, when finally another bundle lands on her doormat.

She’s never opened a package of letters quicker, fearing that they might have gotten lost somewhere, and are actually the last letters Tony has ever sent.

But the dates are recent, recent enough to put Pepper’s mind at ease. She cries reading the first one, wherein Tony admits that maybe, just maybe, he should have brought those gloves she’d made for him after all.

It’s the first time that Tony admits that he’s tired, and that he’s cold, and that he wants to go home not only because he misses her so much, but because he can’t take it any longer.

Pepper wishes, more than ever, that she could wrap him up in a warm hug, and make sure that he doesn’t ever have to suffer the way she’s sure he does right now, ever again. If it were up to her, she would never let Tony do anything like this ever again. She’d keep him close, and keep him safe and out of harm’s way, for as long as she was able.

When news starts spreading around New York that allied forces have stormed Europe by the masses, and driven back the Nazis, and that Europe is being freed little by little, hope blooms that perhaps she’ll actually be able to do so sooner rather than later.

Tony can’t believe it.

For the first time in weeks, silence falls around him. Actual, proper silence.

One of their superiors yelled to cease fire, and reluctantly Tony and his men retreated back into their trenches, seeking cover for what they assumed would come.

But instead of another onslaught of bullets and bombs, what follows is complete and utter silence. Not even a single gun is being fired, and when Tony looks around he sees that the men around him are just as stunned by that deafening silence as he is. They are on their guard, climbing up the walls of their trench to peek across the battlefield, past the plethora of dead bodies and toward where the opposition is visibly retreating.

It’s not unusual. Sometimes it’s a trap. A horrible way of luring the enemy into their death. Tony has lost many of his trenchmates in those ambushes, and he’s not sure he can take losing another one of his friends. But then whispers start up that the war is won, that they no longer have to fight, and guns drop into the deep layers of semi-frozen muck, disbelief and tentatively blooming relief tangible in the air around him.

Tony looks up toward the sky, and for the first time in a long time, there are no planes flying overhead, there is no threat of another airstrike, and it almost feels as if the clouds are parting to let through a little bit of sun.

And in the silence, as Tony looks around him and tries to allow this new, careful feeling of cautious freedom in, he hears it.

From somewhere down the other end of their trench, a familiar tune comes floating toward him to greet him like an old friend. And just like that, Tony is back in his living room with Pepper, swaying to their favorite sonata, and for the first time in a very long time he feels like maybe things will actually be alright.

Pepper knows that Tony is coming home. She just knows it. Out on the streets, word spreads that the war is over, which can only mean one thing. And that one thing is that she is going to be seeing Tony again. They can go back to the way things were.

Besides, Tony did mention that he had a hunch the war had ended in the last letter he sent her, and she hasn’t gotten another letter since. It has to mean that he’s on the boat back to America. Right? Right.

Every day, soldiers are brought into the city in big army trucks, dropped off at a central point to be reunited with friends and family. Naturally, Pepper goes there every day, watching as military personnel unloads dozens upon dozens of men, all in the most horrid states.

The atmosphere is so very different from when the men left. Back then, people cheered the soldiers on, applauding them as they passed by, but now it’s quiet apart from the occasional cry of a family member finding their son or husband in a state in which Pepper absolutely does not want to find Tony.

She waits among other families, anxiously looking on as men reunite with their women and children.

Only a few trucks come in every day, or every few days, but every time it happens, Pepper is there. For as long as Tony is not with her, she goes, and she doesn’t miss a single truck.

She sees men who lost limbs, some who are still bloody from whatever onslaught they endured, some mutilated or burned or barely alive. And most of those who appear to be uninjured, are either trembling or seem to be somewhere else entirely, staring off into space in a way that scares her maybe even more than all the wounds and injuries do.

With every new truck of men that arrives, Pepper starts to realize that she might get Tony home looking like one of them, and she thinks up the worst scenarios.

She knows she’s lucky if Tony comes back at all, but there is no way of knowing, and it terrifies her. She just wants to see her Tony step out of the back of one of those trucks, preferably without any help. She just wants to see him again.

But a few days turns into a week, and a week turns into two, and two turns into three, and she has yet to see him, and it gets harder and harder with every day that passes and every truck that drives away again, empty once more.

She thinks she sees him a few times.

All men are covered in dirt and soot and most are patched up or their uniform is torn, so it’s hard to distinguish one from the other. 

She doesn’t want to give up, but as more time passes, it gets disheartening. She waits, and waits, and waits, clutching the pair of gloves she knit Tony to her chest, hoping that she can give them to him after all. Every day she is about to leave the house to go watch another truck of men unload, she hesitates in the hallway with the gloves in hand. But she brings them with her every time, without fail, and squeezes them in her hands.

If anything, it’s her last little bit of hope she’s holding onto.

Maybe if Tony needs them enough, he’ll come home to come get them. If she can just give Tony his gloves…

One day, when she’s surrounded by families being reunited with their loved ones once again, staring off into space because she had her eyes on the big truck the entire time and her husband didn’t climb out, someone comes up to her.

She doesn’t notice until he’s standing right in front of her, looking a little worse for wear but otherwise fine, pointing at the gloves she’s holding with a trembling hand.

“It’s a little too late for those, isn’t it?” he says.

And maybe Tony lost a few fingers throughout the winter, and he’s malnourished and sickly-looking and dirty above anything else, but he’s home and he’s alive and Pepper can finally give him that hug he wrote he’d been dreaming about for months.

Pepper brings him home. Things haven’t been good for her either, but she’s managed to get by, and scraped together enough to be able to provide Tony with a nice, hot meal to fill his undoubtedly aching belly.

They sit at the dinner table in silence after Pepper gave Tony a long, warm bath, until Tony says he can’t stand the quiet. It’s unnerving.

Pepper turns on the radio, and they eat. Tony doesn’t talk about what happened abroad, and Pepper doesn’t ask. She just sits close to him, and touches him occasionally, running her hand through his hair or squeezing his knobby knee.

She’s just happy that he’s home. Worse for wear, but alive, and mostly in one piece.

After everything she’s seen on that big square, that’s all she could have really asked for.

Their song comes on toward the end of their meal. Despite how exhausted they both are, Pepper pulls Tony to his feet, and Tony puts his arms around her waist and his hands on her hips, and Pepper buries her face into the crook of his neck.

It’s not really what they’re used to. They sway slowly, almost carefully, holding each other close because they know how close they were to losing each other. They remember, vaguely, what it was like to dance to their song so carelessly – but this is nothing like that. They both have their face hidden, but not to hide their too-big smiles, no. To hide the tears running down both of their cheeks, not wanting the other to see just how scared they have been, and how scared they still are.

Pepper sniffs, and it’s Tony who chuckles and pulls back so that they can finally look at each other again.

Tony runs his hand over Pepper’s cheek, and she leans into the touch. He may not have as many fingers as he did when he left, but he has everything else.

And most importantly, he has Pepper.

It’s going to be hard.

Tony is going to have a tough time adjusting, he’s going to have nightmares, the bed will be too soft and the shower will be too warm and sometimes he’ll think he hears things that aren’t there, but Pepper is there with him, every step of the way.

War or not, that’s how it always had been, and that’s how it was always going to be.

**Author's Note:**

> [Come find me on Tumblr :)](https://iloveyou3thousand.tumblr.com/)


End file.
